102 Comments

Amen.

Expand full comment

Good news on this front, the world reached peak per capital emissions about a decade ago

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/

Expand full comment

I very much like the professors statement about fighting climate change leading to an abundance of cheap energy, that is how it should have been sold from day one and while I agree with some of what the post says I still think talking in terms of per-capita emissions has a role

I think this maybe comes from me living in Australia, where outside the Republicans our Conservative Coalition Partys (confusingly for Americans the senior partner is called The Liberal Party) are the most climate-skeptic party of Govt in the developed world and for 20 years now any time there is talk of making the changes needed to fight climate change in this country (like during our Carbon Tax debates and the ensuing decade long climate-wars, where climate stood in for social conservatism in our version of your culture wars) the constant riposte from the Coalition Opposition, then Govt (which reversed the Carbon Price) was "but China"

That was seriously there main argument and it really worked with the Australian ppl, especially suburban ring voters who decide our elections, they would be asked 'why should we close down coal mines, costing jobs, then pay higher power bills (this was before the big reduction in solar and wind prices) when China will increase their carbon emissions by more every year, building more coal fired power plants than we have as a country each and every year for the next decade" it was a really tough argument to fight back against, so the 'Per Capita" framing was the only thing climate action activists had left that had any purchase with those voters (the educated inner-urban electorates were already on-board, but they were, until this year when they finally developed some self-respect, died in the wool Liberal voters for economic reasons, despite the fact the Lib/Nat Coalition used them as rhetorical punching bag for decades 'inner city latte sippers' 'middle class snobs who don't respect good wholesome true Aussies working in the mines or the steel industry' that sort of stuff you are all so aware of

So while I see some good points int his post, I still think 'per-capita' as a role to play in the campaigning arm at least

Expand full comment
Oct 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Good article, but completely obvious to anyone that played Civ V.

Expand full comment
Oct 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

I agree, especially when we get to the point of hectoring and chiding individuals. However, in a democracy changing government policy requires changing enough individual voters’ attitudes, even though governments may run ahead or behind their populace. Arguably, the US being such a high per capita emitter is an indication that there is more political work needed to change attitudes of Americans than say European democracies, but that might be a spurious argument. And even then the best way to change those attitudes is not to focus too much on personal consumption/emission habits.

Expand full comment

Everyone gets it. The problem is that the solutions are not viable yet. Normal people can’t afford a Tesla or to convert their home to solar. Natural gas is plentiful and has a fully developed infrastructure. Build it, make it affordable, better, and accessible, and people will come. Until then, it’s all just a bunch of talk. Demanding sacrifice and shaming people will never work.

Expand full comment
Oct 21, 2022·edited Oct 21, 2022

I would agree that per capita implies thinking about marginal emissions...and that's where the agreement ends. Thinking about marginal emissions does not imply that deep carbonization is not necessary, and the idea that it leads to silly degrowth and sacrifice arguments is simply absurd. I won't address those arguments because they don't exist - you just asserted it.

That deep decarbonization is necessary does not tell us how that task should be distributed. How fast should each country reduce their emissions, to achieve deep decarbonization within a given carbon budget, at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer)? You mention this here "All countries have to get to zero at maximum speed, not just cut the “slack”." but you don't address the issue. Why must everyone go at maximum speed? Economically, this does not make sense. Countries with lower cost marginal emissions cuts available should obviously cut faster, for the world to decarbonize at lowest cost (or maximum benefit, if you prefer).

And morally, it is downright grotesque. Are you actually serious? You think a country like, say, Mozambique - per capita GDP of $547 - should be cutting their emissions at the same rate a country like the US or Canada or Australia should? That's what "everyone at maximum speed" actually means. Is this truly your position?

Expand full comment
Oct 21, 2022·edited Oct 21, 2022

I don't really enjoy being the naysayer, but someone has to do it....

"First, the blunt fact of climate change is that in order to save the world from extremely damaging effects, we can’t just partially decarbonize; we have to completely decarbonize."

This is not a fact, it is a widely repeated claim, unsubstantiated by anything except models based on models. The modeled effects of carbon increase are used to generate scary but unsubstantiated forecasts of large temperature increases. These models are based on large positive feedbacks that assume modest warming from carbon will lead to much further warming from feedback affects (albedo, water vapor as greenhouse gas, methane liberation, or whatever). These feedback effects are entirely speculative. However, these model results are treated as "science", and used as the inputs for further models that attempt to estimate environmental effects of this temperature increase. I haven't studied these second-order models, but I have no confidence in their outputs, because I have no confidence in their inputs.

"Rapid progress in renewable technology has made rapid deep decarbonization feasible instead of a pipe dream. This means that decarbonizing the economy is no longer a matter of making economic sacrifices; instead, it’s an economic opportunity."

I skimmed the Joule paper, and it seems like mindless boosterism, backed up by questionable data. A couple of points: energy costs of renewables are based on, among others, a Lazard study which assumes continuing government subsidies for renewable energy. It shouldn't be necessary to say, but anything can be made to look inexpensive if you don't count the cost of the subsidies. Also, the authors address energy storage by assuming massive use of batteries. They assume that "flow batteries" will be the primary technology, even though this technology has not yet been demonstrated for large-scale operation, let alone given a basis for cost evaluation.

So: the claim that rapid deep decarbonization (or, really, any decarbonization at all) is critical is fundamentally unsubstantiated. Claims that decarbonization can be done while increasing standards of living is little more than wishful thinking.

"What we need for deep rapid global decarbonization is not personal abstemiousness, but government policy. Governments must use a combination of rules and incentives to spur a faster transition to renewables, and they must invest in the infrastructure to spread renewable use quickly."

This sort of thinking makes me sure that we must keep people with Noah's reasoning from getting control of the government.

Expand full comment

Agreed, though there is still significant value in curbing the marginally easiest emissions first, especially because clean tech is always progressing and so the most difficult emissions to get rid of will be much easier to replace years from now.

For example, it makes a lot of sense to shut down coal plants in Poland right now and leave thorough decarbonisation of heavy industry for when we have better green hydrogen technology.

Expand full comment

I don't think I quite agree with this. I get your points that, ultimately we all have to go to zero and that personal choices to use less carbon isn't the way we are going to get there. At the same time, I think that per capita carbon use is a reasonable measure to look at, as it can help determine how well government policy is working to eliminate carbon consumption.

After all, if I told you that Monaco's carbon production was half that of the US, your take away wouldn't be that Monaco was doing better than the US. That metric would either tell us that US was doing great or Monaco had made some really, really bad decisions. The same is true with aggregate comparisons between the US and China, just to a lesser extent. All else being equal, if China is producing the same amount of carbon as the US despite having the 4-5x the population, that is a sign that China is doing better in limiting its overall carbon footprint.

The problem is that all else is not equal.

First, derivatives matter. China's carbon trajectory is going up while the US's carbon trajectory is going down. This suggests that the US is taking this fight more seriously and, unless China changes its priorities, we aren't stopping climate change.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the reason why China has a lower per capita carbon production isn't because it is intentionally more environmentally friendly than the US, it is because it is poorer than the US. If we wanted to hit China's per capita carbon emissions, we could probably do so nearly overnight by crashing the economy or increasing taxes (and then burning the revenues) to the point where the median US income was in line with China ($3,500 per year). The problem is that that would be an awful strategy. Our goal (which you point out is an achievable goal) should be to hit net zero, while increasing (or at least maintaining) current standards of living.

Ultimately, I would say that neither aggregate nor per per capital carbon emissions are the right metric. Rather the right metric is carbon emissions per unit of GDP and, on that metric, we are blowing China out of the water.

Expand full comment

Agreed with almost everything here except I honestly don’t think oil and coal companies are useful targets to demonize at this point either. Energy is life and people have next to no tolerance for higher energy prices. Put the focus squarely on clean energy abundance and we will eventually stop using dirty fuels despite how compelling they are in terms of energy density, portability and immediate safety.

Expand full comment

Renewable alternatives are very important but you don't get to net zero without sacrifice and international cooperation. Today's high oil prices are only due to oil producers management of supply and demand to maximize their profit, the cheapest oil on the planet is still very cheap to produce and there's a lot of it. You will never be able to innovate around all the ways oil is used today without some global carbon price. And to get buy-in from China, India and other poorer countries there needs to be some fairness in per-capita terms.

Expand full comment

Are you sure we need to get to zero per capita? Is that even possible? I thought we needed to get to two or three. Per capita is relevant still.

And I don't think there's an equivalence in moralistic thinking between austerity and this. People who worry about climate are right, they're not choosing this position because they think we're living too well. Not mostly anyway. When you start out from a position of high emissions, yes you are more to 'blame'. But the easier it is to cut too. Much like it's easier to improve if you barely pass a test, just study harder. But if you got 95%, it's really tough to get to 100%.

Expand full comment

True but big fat SUVs and cities built for highways are still gonna emit a lot even if it's all electric (15-30% of lifecycle emissions is from manufacturing). So some ways of life are less compatible with net zero. I agree that changing them would not be a loss (health gains from walkable cities, etc.), and in fact can accelerate GDP growth (capital invested in faster growing industries than incumbent), but will be painful for some, without doubt. And more so if there is a national identity built around the automobile.

Expand full comment

Interesting article, but I think there are a few conceptual problems.

"Global net zero means that all countries’ total emissions have to come down to net zero. It also means that all countries’ per capita emissions have to come down to net zero." This statement is untrue because negative emissions are possible (either via carbon removal technology or afforestation). In practice, this will more likely involve developed nations continuing to emit carbon while developing nations plant trees than the reverse, so your statement will probably be less wrong in a cost-optimised world than the view you are arguing against.

However even if every country is required to get to net zero separately, the rate at which they should do so may be very different; if you assign everyone a carbon budget and require them to get to net zero before spending it all, the rate of decarbonisation should be highest in those with the highest per-capita emissions. So per-capita emissions gives the urgency of a particular area or region getting to net zero for an equitable transition. There is no "maximum speed" short of immediately stopping all fossil fuel burning immediately, so we are always in a world of tradeoffs. To the extent that renewable energy is cheapest, it's clear that everyone should adopt it immediately, irrespective of their carbon targets. But it's not clear that we need to do anything about these situations, since believing this basically implies that the problem will fix itself. In practice just because renewable energy is profitable on the margin under some financial assumptions doesn't guarantee it is for those with higher interest rates, low project security and government corruption in particular, which unfortunately is the case in many regions with low per-capita emissions. So per capita emissions are still useful input for deciding where to inject investment and infrastructural support for these nominally free opportunities to be realised.

Expand full comment

Do you think that framing it in terms of ‘per capita emissions’ also ignores the role of technology in reducing emissions (I.e. this is a ‘person issue’ rather than something a bit more abstract)?

Expand full comment